Monday, May 27, 2013

SON OF A BUCK LAD!

SON OF A BUCK, LAD

Igor’s
(Dan Sinclare’s) gravelly voice was on the message tape.Wild Bill Dutton would be visiting him in
Ione Tomorrow (Tuesday) and Wednesday.Wild
Bill is 83.Did any of the boys want to
give him a holler?He wants to give any
one the chance to re-connect over the next 48 hours.

Wild
Bill warned Igor that he had a different lady than five years ago.As Ray Willsey used to say, Wild Bill was
obsessed by two things—and one of them was football.

Who
was Wild Bill Dutton?Son of a Buck,
lad, if you have to ask that question you will never understand Cal football!

From
his bio you might find that “He lettered as a player under Pappy Waldorf
in 1953 and spent eight years as an assistant coach from 1964-71 under Ray
Willsey.”

But
that misses the point entirely.

Wild
Bill was as unique a coach as Cal was a unique place to don pads.

You
see, just donning the Blue and Gold at Cal is unlike football anywhere else in
the world.Just like Cal is unlike any
other College experience—running out of the Tunnel in Memorial Stadium means
you’ve experienced something very few athletes (at any talent level) have ever,
or will ever experience.

Throw Back is much too modern a word for
Wild Bill.His personality was as
straight forward as his flat top hair cut.What you saw was what you got—nothing froo froo about that man.

He was
a patriot—true blue—and back in the 60’s had no time for those “long hairs” or
that “Mary Annie” stuff kids were smoking.

His
voice was so deep, he could have sung baritone for Frankie Vali and the Four
Seasons.Like E.F. Hutton, when he
spoke, people listened—and no one wondered who was thundering at them.

“Better
you had died at child birth than to have fumbled inside the five” was one of
his quaint expressions.

Wild
Bill coached the grunts—the D lineman who made a living anonymously, grinding
it out, play after play in the trenches.

Myrel
More handled the linebackers and Wild Bill the D lineman.They championed the famous Bear Minimum
Defense back in ’68.It was said that no
team that played Cal (win or lose) that year won the following Saturday.They were just too physically beat up.

I’ve
never checked to see if that is really true, but it doesn’t have to be.It’s the metaphor that counts.As
Cosmic Ray said, we could have been national champs that year (we finished 16th)
had we only played in telephone booths.We may not have been the quickest 22 in the country—but we were the
toughest.

Among the
many D lineman he sent to the pros back then were perennial All Pro Ed White
(moved to offense) Sherm White, and Dan Goich.

Wild Bill’s
boys loved him.He actually came in contact
with more kids than any other position coach, because he also ran the scout
team (we called ourselves “The Green Weenies” in honor of the green slip overs
we wore) against his first team defense.

Comedian
Bob Sarlatte (a former green weenie like moi)
has made a living out of imitating coach
Dutton giving the scout team a “trap play” which would fool a Goich or White
into over committing and getting burned.Alas, just as the “trick play” was about to unfold, Wild Bill’s voice
would echo off the wall at Edwards (where we practiced), “I’m looking at you Ed
White!Don’t get trapped by that pulling
guard!”With that the kid’s helmet would
be spun around on his head and he’d be peering through the ear hole, having
received an unpleasant forearm “rip” from Ed, who didn’t fancy looking bad in
front of his coach.

When
Craig Morton had retired from the Denver Broncos and was made head coach of the
Start up Denver Gold, the first coach he Hired was Wild Bill.Curly knew that WildBill understood young men and how they craved
to become the best they could be.

We
assumed Wild Bill was an anachronism when in the 90’s Tom Holmoe hired this 70
year old has been.Yet according to his bio:

After Cal's aggressive style of play on the
defensive line helped Cal post a league-leading 125 tackles behind the line of
scrimmage in '98, his group helped the Bears lead the Pac-10 in sacks with a
school-record 51 in 1999 and another 44 last year. Among the players who have
gone through his tutelage are 1999 Pac-10 sack leader Mawuko Tugbenyoh,
two-time All-Pac-10 choice Jacob Waasdorp and first team All-American Andre
Carter, the first round pick of the San Francisco 49ers this past April.

Apparently these kids loved
the loveable Luddite and none of us where surprised.The kids that played for him still remember
and admire him today.

1 comment:

Jack Stirton
said...

I had the opportunity to be a BEAR and played with both Bill and his brother in the early 1950's. The last time we saw Bill was on a trip with to the Bears versus Oregon that we won the team trip at a Pappy's Boy's Banquet in the last year of Holmoe's coaching career at CAL. My good friend Net Leiba reminds me of Bill's years at CAL during his years when Bill coached under Wilsey. We get together at least twice yearly with our Pappy's Boys group. They include many of the older guy like we are becoming. GO BEARS! !!Jack 1951 - 1953

About Me

I write a Weekly Column for the St. Helena Star and have a Weekly Radio Show on KVON 1440am (KVON.com) on Wednesday's at 5pm. My Columns are about daily small town life in rural St. Helena. I'm old school and often write about the "old Days." I'm a Capitalist an believe in individual liberty and the rugged individualist. I also do a weekly blog on my trips to the Cal Bears Football games--but you gotta luv the Bears to like it. Having no marketable skills I sell dirt (vineyards wineries, ranches and estates), having formerly been a Creative Director and Copy Writer in New York and S.F.